Chippewa Valley Times

The University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire will lead a four-year project funded by a $1.6 million National Science Foundation grant, in partnership with the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. The initiative, called “Building Research Infrastructure and Development to Grow Emerging Research Institutions” (BRIDGE), aims to address challenges that faculty face when seeking and managing external grants.

Heather Johnson Schmitz, manager of grants and contracts in UW-Eau Claire’s Office of Research and Sponsored Programs, is the principal investigator for the project. She explained that a survey conducted across UW campuses showed that administrative tasks related to external grants often discourage faculty from pursuing future funding opportunities.

“This grant will help address issues identified in a survey of UW campuses, which revealed that time and resource constraints created by administrative tasks associated with external grants often create burdens and discourage future external grant seeking,” Johnson Schmitz says.

She noted that respondents reported spending an average of more than 70 hours per month on activities such as hiring students, sourcing supplies, and tracking budgets for grant-funded projects.

“What our UW survey revealed aligns with the national average for administrative time burdens related to grant-funded research,” Johnson Schmitz says.

“Our goal is to significantly reduce that grant-related administrative work for faculty, create better connections across campus stakeholders and develop a model that can benefit other campuses.” A new grant-funded position at UW-Eau Claire and UW Oshkosh will support faculty with the identified administrative tasks.

The BRIDGE project centers on three main strategies: implementing a post-award research concierge (PostARC) position at both universities; partnering with the National Council of University Research Administrators (NCURA) for a systemwide peer review across all 11 comprehensive UW campuses; and creating a community of practice involving representatives from each campus to address findings from the peer review process.

Johnson Schmitz highlighted the innovative nature of conducting a peer review across an entire state university system rather than just one institution.

“NCURA will typically conduct a review of a single school, but we went to them explaining that we really want to understand the research enterprise across the system campuses, and they agreed to pilot this method,” Johnson Schmitz says.

“We will gain insight and avoid reinventing the wheel by reviewing and implementing suggestions from the peer review — the community of practice will be the catalyst for this work.”

Esther Eke, director of the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs at UW Oshkosh, serves as Johnson Schmitz’s counterpart on this effort.

“This collaboration is an exciting opportunity to strengthen the research enterprise across the UW,” Eke says.

“The systemwide peer-review process and the community of practice will help all UW campuses share best practices and build lasting infrastructure to support faculty and students alike,” says Eke, adding that hiring the research concierge position at UW Oshkosh is particularly exciting.

“This new position will provide our outstanding faculty the support they need to seek and manage grants and creating meaningful, grant-funded research opportunities for students.”

Dr. Erica Benson, director of the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs at UW-Eau Claire, said she expects this funding will increase student involvement in externally funded projects under faculty mentorship.

“By providing more administrative support to UWEC faculty who have external grants, this NSF GRANTED project can increase the number of students working on funded projects with faculty mentors. Faculty will have more time to mentor students and more faculty will apply for external grant funding because they can rely on the administrative support,” Benson says.

Benson credited Heather Johnson Schmitz’s leadership as key in securing this award.

“Heather has been the driving force behind this grant, and she has created an incredibly well-structured, collaborative, innovative plan to improve research capacity and support for research activities at UWEC and the UW comprehensives over the next four years.”